Jun 15 2009
The Dualism of Individuality
The Dualism of Individuality
By: Gustavo Lequerica-Calvo
I’ve been thinking lately about the dualism of the word individuality. Sure, everyone is an own universe, an own mind but when we try to reaffirm of individuality most of the time we dwell in the common majority when we try to express our individualism. Even with our names and birthdays aren’t that common, we share our names at least with 6 million people and our birthday with 9 million (sure I don’t think there are many guys with my name, so far we are 4 only worldwide; and with our talents… maybe with a really large number and the only way we can excel is by being the best at any cost. Sometimes if we try to search our individualism with subcultures, or urban tribes we aren’t searching for anything that can makes us unique, because most of the people in those urban tribes are there for the fad and as soon the fad pass away much of the members will leave the group.
Take an example of the Emo subculture, now they are in vogue and a few years ago the Punks where the dominant majority. Sure, there are some exceptions to the rule, but a lot of people when they are growing up they try to reaffirm their individuality by joining this groups without thinking what benefits can bring to their formation.
There is a dualism in individuality, a dualism that lays in our own egocentrism and our own desires to be known, and in try to be different from the society that surrounds us, but we can’t be different if we can’t accept that we are part of a society.
